AS GOD IS MY JUDGE
I've dealt with a lot of subjects concerning the Christian community. How the traditional church has lost its grip on fundamental Christianity. I've talked about their actions and the reasons behind the actions. I haven't dealt with two very controversial subjects that recently have invaded my space. I notice that I (and many others) experience a feeling of confusion when I hear about these actions.
We've got two very large areas of controversy, prejudice and hate-mongering going on in the Christian frame against homosexuality and abortion. Most of the outward acts we see are in the protests against abortion, but there's plenty of gay-bashing going on, too. Before abortions went public, churches all across America heard sermons, or parts of sermons, which conveyed disapproval of homosexuality. The concept is driven home week after week, "It is impossible to be both Christian and gay." Hell certainly awaits any practicing homosexual.
We can't dive into this subject without setting a frame of reference and context. It seems to me that upon hearing of gay-bashing, sermons against gays, and the killing and burning by anti-abortionists I, as said, experience confusion. The action sounds "off the wall." I screw up my face and say, "Why are they doing that? It's so overboard. I just don't understand that." All that confusion I've come to recognize as my reaction to Code. I call it Code. People say or do things that seem way out of context. I've found that they aren't really saying or doing what they seem to be. They're really trying to get some other message across, and this is the way they're doing it. The kid burns down the school because he's missing attention at home. It's no different for adults. We all do that kind of stuff 'till we die. It's a process of life. It's the way we do life to get our needs met. We rarely speak bare fact. We beat around the bush.
There's some HEAVY Code involved in gay-bashing and anti-abortion actions that I see. I maintain that most of this overt, confrontational action on the part of the Christian Right is based in one, a perverted use of scripture and two, selfish reasons. I think it’s necessary to recognize both parts of the action. The scripture is, of course, what provides them the rationale for hurting others, including murder. Wow, how off the wall is that? It's their own selfishness which drives them, not the reasons they give. They quote the Bible and tell us that homosexuality is an abomination. They're right. Let's look.
It says in Romans 1:24 that God gave certain people up to dishonor their own bodies. Verse twenty-seven is the proof-text: "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, etc.," That's one passage. When you hear that in church you're going to form an opinion that those people are not right, their sinning is almost equal to murder. There's another favorite verse used to convince gays they shouldn't be. Exodus 18:22. God is laying down laws through Moses and is speaking to men when He says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination." It's an abominable thing to God for two men to have a sexual relationship. That's clear from the scripture. God doesn't like that. That's the kernel of truth that some use to twist reality into self-service. It's not the Bible that gets twisted.
There're millions of self-serving "Christians" who are trying to annihilate gays. There's some good propaganda around. I don't know if you've seen a popular anti-gay video that's been circulating. It's being shown on various Christian Right TV shows. The production has been accomplished so that it is, as usual, the most titillating and enflaming. The narration is very inflammatory, plus they've taken from gay rights parades and demonstrations scenes of drag queens dressed up in all their outrageous finery, playing with oversized dildoes on the street, and pretending to act in the most exaggerated sexual manner they can get away with. The bits I've seen even stirred up some of my old subconscious baggage. I think that, like the censor board, half the reason for the video is the vicarious thrill the audience gets by watching things that their darker parts would like to do.
The manifestation of that kind of brainwashing is readily encountered in the language of the Christian frame. Something happened recently on a radio talk show which demonstrates this point. A person called in to comment on a decision made by a public official. The official had reversed his stand with regard to the treatment of homosexuals and was being accused of lying. The responder missed the point completely. The caller was in the self-righteous Christian box labeled, "Queers go to Hell." Instead of addressing the public official's dishonesty, the caller agreed with the exclusive action of the official on the grounds that gays should be denied access or support because of their ungodly, lewd actions. The point, again, of the discussion was the official's dishonesty. If the issue had been around building a road or not building a road this caller would have had nothing to say except maybe that the official had indeed lied. But because it involved a third party who happened to be homosexual, that issue was used as a platform for self-righteous condemnation of a group.
The abortion controversy is conducted the same way. It's people twisting all the true scriptures where God or Christ or a man of God has made a statement concerning children and parents. God loves children. God does not condone abortion at will. Life is precious to God. Just the page I'm now looking at in my Bible has five additional references to a god named Molech. He's the old Pagan God of fire. He required that babies be purified by fire. The parents were to throw their babies through the fire. Sometimes they died. This practice was common in Old Testament times. That's why God talked about it so much. "And thou shall not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech." "Suffer the little children to come into me," Jesus said. God loves children; mainly because they're so trusting is my opinion. God loves children. He doesn't want to see them aborted.
He killed one of Judah's boys for tampering with the process of conception. The guy was, according to law, supposed to go to his dead brother's wife and father children for the dead brother. He didn't want to do that so he "spilled his seed on the ground." God killed him. Even before conception, God doesn't like the perversion of His process. He constantly teaches that if we go outside the way He has made things to work, in or out of the God frame, we're going to run into trouble. Some people call it the universal law of retribution. If you do it the wrong way, hoping that reality will bend to what you want it to be, pretty soon reality shows up with the truth of the situation. That truth usually takes the form of stress. God made the world to work one way. Not the way I want, or you want, but how He wants. It's the simplest thing to sit down and do a hard, soul-searching study to find out where you're trying to twist what really is, into what we want it to be. It's the best way to eliminate stress.
There's a small gray area in the abortion issue for me. But this is not the place for a lengthy discussion on abortion in cases of rape or the mother's life being in jeopardy. We're trying to understand here the why's of the Christian Right's behavior. I'm addressing the misuse of accurate scripture about kids, and procreation by the anti-abortion advocates to do other people bodily harm. And say, "It's OK, God's on our side."
When I look at the actions and rhetoric, in the true sense of the word, because rhetoric only tries to win a point not tell the truth, I see people who are basing their actions on judgment. People who are not inside the head of a person are trying to judge what IS in the head of the other person. That goes directly opposite to God's command to "Judge not." Those folks, in any other context, would be the first ones to pull out "judge not" to show us that we're not right in judging them. Don't get me wrong, now. Folks have a right to opinion. They have a right to opinion, not oppression; opinion, not oppression. But, opinions are just like you-know-what, everybody's got one.
Now we have to look at instructions. There are many places in the Old and New testaments where God or Jesus is giving instructions: the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, events in the street. “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, keep the Sabbath.” Additionally, Paul, who wrote a majority of the New Testament, gives us a myriad of instructions. He deals with all walks of life: marriage, communion, behavior, and church duties. You can hardly find a book that doesn't contain some instruction, a reference to instruction or the evidence of the keeping of some instruction. The Bible is an Instruction book. I call it the Rulebook of Life, just as are the Ten Commandments. They teach us how to get on the best way down here. That doesn't mean you'll go to heaven for using the Bible as you behavioral guide.
With that frame set down, let's see if we can find where these activists go wrong; how it is that I can judge that they are perverting the use of scripture for selfish reasons. We must ask two questions. To whom were the instructions given? When God, Jesus and Paul gave instructions, whom were they talking to? Secondly, did those instructions reach beyond the group of instructees?
Who was instructed? Who did God talk to through Moses
and the prophets? Who was God instructing? I find no mention, not a verse that says God talked to Pharaoh about the Exodus from Egypt. He had a lot to say to Moses, and a bit to Aaron, but not to Pharaoh. God didn't talk to Nebuchadnezzar. He talked to Daniel. Let's put some flesh and blood on the Bible. Do you really think that if God came to Sennacharib when he was besieging Jerusalem with over 200,000 troops, and told him that this wasn't a good idea, and that if he persisted he'd lose 180,000 men in one night, that Sennacharib wouldn't have packed it in and gone home? But God didn't talk to him; He talked to the King of Jerusalem and told him that he didn't have to worry. The point is that God doesn't give instructions to those outside His own group. He instructed the Israelites, all twelve tribes; which included the one tribe of Jews, the Judahites. He only talked to the twelve tribes, not the Canaanites or Jebusites or Hittites. Who did Jesus instruct? Did he go to Rome and talk to Caesar? Did he go talk to the king of Egypt? Did he bring His instructions over to China and tell them how to live? No. He gave instructions to his own people, mainly the Jews, but also the Galileans who were the Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin. He went to his own people. Christ didn't go and condemn the Arabs for engaging in homosexuality. If he mentioned homosexuality at all, he told his own people.
The same is true of Paul. Following Paul's ministry shows that he went to places inhabited mainly by Israelites, the ones who migrated north and west as the Lost Tribes. They wound up in northwest Europe and the British Isles. When Paul gets to those places, like Galatia just beneath the Black Sea, he's talking to ex-Gauls. They came back from over in Gaul (France), sacking Rome en route, to resettle in present day Turkey. Don't be confused by the fact that he always hit the synagogue first in those locations. He was a highly educated member of the ruling theological body of Israel. He started with the Jews in each location because they knew the scriptures and could be shown the connections to Jesus. Even so, he started in the synagogue, but wound up in the streets. Mostly the Jews didn't want to hear it. Paul wanted to go to Asia and God turned him around, because he was to go to the "lost sheep of the House of Israel" first.
All of God's, all of Jesus', all of Paul's instructions went to God's "chosen" people; the Israelites, including the Jews. What did they do with those instructions, Old and New testaments?
The Israelites in the Old Testament moved into the Promised Land and took city after city. Finally, under David's rule, about 1000 BC, the whole of the territory was conquered, pulled together and there was peace and prosperity for forty years. They were following God's instructions. What happened? During that particular time, they would have had time to send out the missionaries. But they didn't.
They didn't go to Egypt and say, "Now listen guys, you gotta stop this homosexuality stuff, and throwing your babies through the fire. God doesn’t want you doing that kind of thing." I think one of the most interesting sidelights of the history of the original nation of Israel, the twelve tribes, is that they never did any mission work, as we know it today. They solidified their own territory. That territory included more than Palestine. See, Abraham was on a hill when God told him that all he could see and every place his foot touched would be given to him and his descendants. It is true that there were Israelite immigrants all through history that settled other parts of the world, but that was mainly for economics, trade.
David's kingdom extended from the Nile River to the Euphrates over in Mesopotamia. Even though they had sovereignty over those places, they didn't go over there and say, "OK, you guys gotta be circumcised." They never established outside colonies. The Israelites didn’t try to impose their instructions from God on other cultures. They knew the rules worked, but didn't require others to live by them. Remember the second question? Did these instructions reach beyond the group? The instructions didn't say, "Go out and tell everybody not to be gay." The instructions did not reach beyond the group. If a stranger came in, there were provisions made by God for the stranger within the group. The stranger adheres to the rules of the group and the group accepts that stranger as one of their blood kin. The instructions didn't reach beyond the group and did not require the group to enforce them on others.
I think you've got the point by now. The gay-bashers and anti-abortion people are going outside of their own group, mainly the Christian frame, in order to put their God-given rules on those not in the group. They're perverting the use of valid scriptures for selfish reasons. God never said to go instruct unbelievers how to live. At the very most, the Israelites were to demonstrate to the outside world that God's instructions, if followed, would result in a good life. If you do it God's way, it really works. That was one of the "jobs" of the chosen people.
Where will all this lead? Is the religious Right next going to say that all U.S. citizens have to take communion? Are they going to require us to take communion in the schools? "OK, first we'll pray, then we'll take communion and then we'll study English." Where 's this going to lead? Are we going to find the Bible required reading in restroom stalls at the airport? A Gideon Bible hanging on a chain on the wall.
Why, then, is all this happening? Let's stay with the idea that it's for selfish reasons, because murder and gay-bashing certainly aren't based on scripture. I maintain that it's a manifestation of inadequacy. It's a sense of inadequacy that drives most of our stress-producing actions. These overt, harmful acts are being committed under the rationale of a "Good Cause;" a rationale that comes off the wall. It just doesn't fit. But, in the name of this "Good Cause" people are burning and murdering. And that's a sneaky part. Something done in the name of a cause relieves the individual of responsibility. The Cause is responsible. The people who burn the clinic don't think themselves responsible. That lets the one doing the specific action off the hook.
This is nothing new. Reinhold Niebuhr outlined three levels of sin. The first level we know well. It's that excessive neurotic personal stuff: drugs, sex, food. It's the stuff that's right out there for everyone to see. It's the easiest to recognize and the easiest to overcome. The second level of sin is when we do harm for a cause. That elevates the responsibility up one level off the individual to a group. "I can do this because the benefit to the group is more important than my individual benefit. We have to go kill all those people for the good of the group." I guess I have to tell you the third level of sin, although I don't want to spend much time on it, even though it very definitely applies here. Self-righteousness or spiritual pride is the hardest sin to recognize in one’s self and the hardest to get rid of. When you can put your negative, harmful actions on God, you're home free. Someone might be able to blame your whole group, but no one can blame God. God is inviolate. Self-righteous folks can do whatever they want. Look at the Inquisition.
If a sense of inadequacy is involved, how will that come out in a practical way? The manifestations of a sense of inadequacy always try to balance up and fill out the hole that we perceive to be there. It's funny. First we make up the hole, then we make up the stuff to fill it in.
If we feel inadequate in a certain thing by forty percent, then we make some way of filling up that hole. If for no other reason than to keep our own sanity. To top it off, our MIS-perceived area of inadequacy isn't necessarily the same or even present in most other people's eyes. They don't know how you feel. They don't know that you feel forty percent ineffective. They might think you're a pretty together person. So, we try to make up for what we perceive to be a lack in ourselves. Sometimes we recognize that our plan might not meet with other's approval and we bolster up the plan with some excessive rationale to balance that inadequacy. Rationalization is a balance of inadequacy.
I heard someone say their feet were so sensitive they had to wear $100 shoes This person was only warding off a comment about spending a lot of money when they had said that they were really broke lately. Then I saw them wearing cheap tennies. We've all seen that process in action. People just naturally seem to have to justify their behavior.
At the same time, if you take it one step further, you'll notice that you can't balance completely. We find that because of our imperfect condition, not only can't we do something one hundred percent right, we can't even do one hundred percent of making it right. We can't say, "Gee, my plan is twenty-five percent off, this is going to cause some problems. I better make up for that twenty-five percent." We can't even do that. When recognized, we can't balance that void by ourselves. Even with understanding of the problem, our imperfection gets in the way and we still fall short. The proof of that statement lies in the clear evidence of other people's rationalizations. We'll get to that in a minute.
I'm sure you see where this leads. There is only one adequate balance for that perceived inadequacy. That's God. Our sense of lack can be laid on God. And if my plan is twenty-five percent off, I can do what I can to make up the difference, as much as is humanly possible and give the rest to God. Here's the BIG difference. I'll feel OK with the lack that I still perceive. It's the not-feeling-OK (in other's eyes) that drives us to irrational behavior. We want to feel OK. If we don't have place to give off the part that we can't handle by ourselves, then we're going to try and make it up by ourselves and carry that stress around.
To return to the earlier point about over-balancing, usually my experience has shown me that if I've got a fifteen or twenty-five percent lack in something I've decided to do, I usually wind up balancing more than that twenty-five percent. I'll rationalize up to thirty-five or forty percent just to make sure I'll feel OK. It's our way of exaggerating some rationale in order to feel all right with ourselves. And you know something? It never works. You could rationalize a hundred forty percent over a twenty-five percent lack and an objective third party who hears and sees these words and actions, is going to say, "You're just blowin' smoke." Rationalization can't make it right. It's funny we don't learn that real young.
God is the only place you can be satisfied and rest at peace that it's OK. The part you feel unsure about, inadequate about is OK. "I've done all I can do, God's going to have to do the rest." It's risky and feels out of control. It feels inadequate. But the inadequacy becomes acceptable. We don't, and this is the main point, have to talk in code. We don't have to act in code. We don't have to act out our inadequacies in such a way that for us it satisfies that hole we see. Because again, outsiders are never satisfied by what satisfies us. They see right through our smoke screen and they know that we're still wrong in spite of what we might say. Our bringing a Bible verse into the situation is irrelevant, the action is still wrong. You don't set fire to a person's house or a place where people go for medical attention. You just ... don't ... do that.
Again we have to ask why. We have a dilemma. We have all these people claiming to be on God's side, working and living for God, their cause and actions are because of God and the Bible. They should know. If they were laying their inadequacies on God, they wouldn't hear other people say, "Hey, you can't kill people, even in the name of your cause." Then why do they do that stuff? People who are in the God frame still acting like they weren't. They seem to be contradicting themselves. "We're for God, but we won't depend on Him." "We're for God, but we won't let Him take of the problems of the world." "We're for God, but we've gotta help Him 'cuz He can't handle it."
As a digression, I think there's a case to be made for "bad sex." I suspect that just the sexual aspect of abortion is very titillating to the murderer or arsonist. That's just a beginning. Many gays are openly sexual and sometimes defiantly so. I am certainly no gay basher (why some of my best friends...), but there's a sensual chord inside me that perks up at some of the sexually oriented behavior I've seen. But that titillation probably isn't more than a low level excitement that can easily be hidden in the enthusiastic passion for the Cause.
We're still left with the question, "Why do they do this stuff, anyway!? No belief. No belief. Inadequate belief. Too small belief. When you act for God, and you let Him take care of what you see as missing in the process that you can't handle or accomplish, you're walking in with your eyes half closed. How do you know what's going to happen. It's a risky situation. It's a fearful situation. Fear of the unknown. Nobody's going to blame anybody for fear of the unknown.
The firmer your belief, not your faith, the easier it is to lay that stuff on God. The risk doesn't go away. The unknown doesn't all of a sudden become known. It's still unknown. But if you have a really strong belief in God, to the point where you know there's a God the way you know the sun will come up tomorrow, then it'll be easier for you to step out in faith. The stepping, in spite of the circumstances, is the faithing; doing it God's way, based on what He's said. And He's said, "Love your neighbor." We'll leave aside the original language that says love means be of benefit to. Love in our context means you don't have to like the person or his actions, but you have to wish him well. How can you kill someone if you're wishing him good? You can't burn down a place and cause people bodily harm if you're wishing their well-being.
Now we have a solid, logical explanation for the code that the religious Right is engaging in. And hurting people. No belief or a belief so small that, and this is important, they have to add to it with their own rationale, their own construction. If they don't add to what God has said, they can't make up for the wrong qualities of murder and arson.
If someone sits home and decides that, "I'm going down to that clinic and I feel justified to kill one of those doctors," that plan is probably ninety-five percent wrong. Their rationale is that the doctor is doing something wrong in God's eyes. "I have to kill those people because their wrong." Here's how it might be if a person's rationalization was consciously thought out. "I know that my plan is ten percent OK. My belief that God can take care of the injustice and immorality makes up another twenty-five percent. I've only got thirty-five percent of my rationale taken care of. If God can't do any more, I'll have to make up the missing sixty-five percent for Him. Then I can stop that doctor from performing abortions on innocent young women. With a small belief, my God can't handle it and I have no choice but to help Him. I want this done, and He can't do it. But I can do it with a little help from God and a whole lot of help from myself." Small or no belief. A God not big enough to handle His own work.
I maintain that most of Christianity's woes are caused by unbelief. People in the Bible are accused over and over of unbelief. They don't believe God enough to be obedient. Throughout all the centuries people have given lip service to God. And God's no different than anything else. That's what we humans do, give lip service to concepts. It's one of our main things. You can't name very many people that walk their talk. Lots of lip service. I think that the amount of lip service is in direct, opposite proportion to the amount of belief a person has. The more lip service, the smaller the belief or commitment.
Well, what shall we do? Shall we round up all the anti-abortionists and gay-bashers into Yankee stadium or some New Mexico desert and use one of Tesla's electronic inventions on them? Douse them with some special electrical current that will give them a change of heart? So that they all are given understanding at a step? Give them all belief? You can't give anyone belief. You have to build your own belief. I can't build your belief. I can't make you believe anything.
If any change is to be effected, I think we first have to find out the cause for so small a belief. How is it that avowed Christian God-believers don't. It seems that their belief is that last thing to be questioned, but if we assume their belief is faulty I think we'll not be far from discovering how that could come about. We may not be able to change a person's belief, or make them believe, but maybe we can affect why they believe the way they do.
I think it would be good to look at the basic process of building a belief. Beliefs don't just switch on while we're asleep. Beliefs are built by examining the relevant evidence. When enough evidence is studied the point of psychological certainty is attained. You examine 'till the "last straw" bit is presented and you can say, "No way can this can be," or "Yeah, it's gotta be this way." You now have a belief. You've experienced the facts of reality to the point of acting without question as though the belief was true. We don't question our beliefs every time we use them; only when something we respect contradicts the belief.
Now we're down to what I believe is the main reason why some Christians have such a small belief in God. Obviously these bashing murderers must have too small belief if they feel they must go outside their own group to enforce their will on people. It must be a lack of evidential study.
I've been to a few Bible study classes in my life. Not too many recently. I grew up in the church frame. I know what Bible study is. I know what they do in those study classes in church. Most study groups that I've encountered go over the same tired behavioral passages and historical accounts. Our fire-bombers are the spawn of such Bible study.
Let me get one thing clear, here. We're talking about the people who are engaged in heavy, harmful, overt acts that crowd into the Nightly News. We're not talking about some rural Episcopal minister that isn't participating in this behavior. We're not broad-brushing here. I don't want you to hear "everybody" when I include only that tiny number of idiots and the somewhat larger group of their passive supporters that cheer when the Molotov cocktails fly.
Behavioral passages and historical accounts. "Now we're going to learn all of the travels of Paul. We won't concentrate on his message, we did that last year. This study will give us a good geographical and contextual understanding of his preaching." Now there's nothing wrong with that. It's a good way to get into the Bible. "Let's learn the history of the Israelites from the time of Abraham to the time of David and Solomon."
Those historical studies, while good for familiarization, don't promote a belief in God. They don't bolster up your belief, they don't make you surer that there's a God. They only give you a more intimate knowledge of the details of a historical account. However, if you take those same historical accounts, checking carefully the prophesies interwoven therein, and check them with extra-biblical histories, I'm sure that your opinion of God's reality will be effected by seeing the fulfillment of all those prophesies.
The same is true of the behavioral passages; live this way, do this, don't do that. Actually, most Bible Studies I've attended on Sunday morning were just preaching the sermon before the sermon. They love to hang out in Corinthians and James and talk about all the things you're not supposed to do; all the while taking on the air that no one in that class ever does the same. This type of study doesn't promote a belief in God. Just the hope that He isn't real, so He won't come down on me.
Establishing God's reality should be a paramount objective of the Christian church. The main job of the leader of that group, according to what God passes down in the Bible, is to "perfect", meaning complete in Greek, the saints. Perfect the congregation. How does a minister "complete" the saints given to his charge? What's the objective of perfecting the saints? So they can act in more and more faith. So they can act in trust of God more each day, and thereby gain the strength to make His work the top priority in their lives. Acting as though their needs will be met in spite of the substance they divert from their needs to God's work. He will make up the time, energy and money they give up to do His work. Acting in faith is what it's called, faithing. Another way to say it is acting in faith instead of self. One doesn't act in faith of self, one acts in faith of God.
That's the main, nay the ONLY job of the church: to forcefully elicit God-trusting acts from the congregation. God's whole message is the availability and the method for attainment of salvation. The one message that the Bible teaches is salvation by trusting acts based on what God has already said about whom He is and what He wants to do.
Faithing. An act, based on the belief that God's statements are true, continued in the confidence that God will live up to those statements. So, from the minister down to the layperson in the congregation the main objective is promoting faith, getting faithing going. Get faith going and everything else will follow. That's where ALL Bible studies and sermons should be pointed.
But, you know, you can't act in faith unless you've got a track record that it works, something you can see, to rely on. If you haven't seen that faith works, then you'll have to rely on the word of someone that says it works. Namely, God. Check out God's track record and see if He's doing what He said. That's where the study should be directed, not how I'm supposed to behave on the street. My study should all be concerned with expanding my knowledge of God's reality first, and then how He and I should relate. I should be trying to find out if He did what He said. If I find that over the course of 3500 years God has kept the promises and prophesies found in the Bible, maybe I can believe Him when He says, "Act in faith and I'll save you." I certainly can't prove that statement out a study of anything physical.
I grew up in the Baptist church. And at seventeen, after going to church every week, three times a week, Sunday a couple times, Bible study, youth group, Christian boy scouts, I had almost NO concrete belief about God. None. Is there a God? I'd probably have said yes, but reluctantly because who knew for sure. Put yourself in my place. Could I have acted in trust? I wasn't even sure there was a God. How could I trust God? How could I step out in faith and let God take care of the obstacles? There's no way! I didn't have a strong enough belief, a big enough belief. I didn't have a big enough platform to operate from.
And here we are again, in the same old place. I'm never going to change what I have to say. Faithing. It's always going to be faithing. Besides, Paul says that we need this stuff "dinned" into us. Faithing is acting in trust. How are we saved? We're saved by faithing. Check the New Testament. And it's time to get a deeper definition of faithing. I'll try to be brief.
Faith that's translated into English from the Greek, comes from a primary verb. That primary verb is PEITHO. It means acting under persuasion, yielding, obeying. Out of that word, the Greek word PISTIS, which translates straight into faith, and is still a verb, is just one step away from the root PEITHO. PISTIS is a verb. Believe has the same root but is derived from PISTIS. If you'll allow, it's all verb-age, not a lot of talk.
So when it says we're saved by faith OR belief it's an action we've done. Look at the confusion wrought by one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Who out there didn't think on hearing that verse the first time, that all you had to do was believe there was a God? "Well, all I gotta do is sit here and believe there's a God and I'll be saved." No, you won't! Believe is a verb. Those who "act on their belief" in God will be saved. They will act in trust of God, somehow. That's what saves us. And the whole New Testament is about that. Paul says it over and over and over. By grace are ye saved through faith. We get the promise of God's Spirit through faith.
This isn't some mystical mumbo jumbo. This is practical stuff we're talking about. This isn't something you can muse about on a Sunday afternoon. This is our daily lives, things that can help us do the dishes a better way. Every action of our lives can be effected by this concept of faith; acting in trust that God will take care of what we can't. Here's the way it works.
God is helping us to do His work, by making it easier for us to do our work. When we're living for God, faithing, doing things in His direction, then He helps us get the stuff we need to live our lives: shelter, food, etc. He takes care of that stuff. And notice, the more we work for Him, the more He has to provide for us.
"How do I know that my situation applies? Am I acting in God's direction? How can I tell what that direction is? I need money, right now. Did God say He's going to supply my money? Did God say He'd keep me healthy?"
By definition, faithing is acting on something God has said. Where do we find a place where God has stated something that we can act on? It's got to be at least one place. We're sure to find out about God in a place where He speaks His own name.
Try that. Go to the Bible and find the places where God says His own name, usually Jehovah-something. There are at least seven times God uses His own name coupled with another word that is descriptive of Himself. A note about the word Jehovah. The Hebrew word translated Jehovah means "wanting to get out" or "wanting to show Himself." It's a revelation about God, something about God that points in our direction and is champing at the bit to get out.
Here are some God-names. Jehovah (wants to get out) Rapha, healing. Jehovah heals. He's a healing God. He wants and is ready to heal. Jehovah Shalom. You probably recognize the commonly used word for peace. God offers peace, not only from Himself, but from your anxieties. Jehovah Jirah is provision. God's nature is to provide. He's already leaning in our direction with His hands full of stuff for us. Jehovah Rhohi, meaning shepherd or guide. He wants to help steer you through the obstacles you encounter. That's who God is, a guide. He's the kind of person whose nature it is to give guidance. Jehovah Tsidkenu, God our Righteousness. We surely can't be our own Righteousness. Jehovah Nissi is protection. The word Nissi refers to a battle banner, which can show our enemies that we've got a powerful ally. Jehovah Sabaoth describes God's sphere of influence. It means He is the Lord of Hosts. Hosts means all the animals, all the insects, all the plants, the weather, the volcanoes, not to speak of the unseen forces all around us. God controls it all. By His name Sabaoth He tells us that He has the power to bring any part of the whole creation to help us.
Although there are hundreds of other statements by God that we can use for our own situation, just the names are enough to get us through all our rough spots as we try to live God's way. Provision, protection, peace, healing, guidance, what else do you need? Additionally, Paul says that ALL the promises of God are ours through Jesus. In other words Paul says if we can find any place in scripture where God is talking to individuals or the Israelites as a whole, we can appropriate that statement for ourselves. You'll find that "fishing license" in II Corinthians 1:20. "All the promises of God are yea in him and in him amen (so be it unto you).
The Bible says, "Faith (a courageous action based on something God has said) cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God," Romans 10:17. Certainly God's self-spoken name is the "word of God." Jehovah Tsidkenu, God will be your righteousness.
Build your belief. Get a firm handle on God's reality and you won't have to act like a jerk to balance your shortcomings.
When I first mentioned God's work, I heard the question, "Well, what is God's work? I can't presume to know what God's work is or what I could possibly do to help." I'm sure that if the urge to find out about God's work strikes you, you'll find a source of information. The information is available. Just thank God for the urge and start asking questions.
I'm sorry if this discussion has been hard for some people to hear, but it's really been on my mind lately. I must stress, you have to leave people alone. You can't change anybody. You can't save anybody. You can't teach anybody anything. These clinic burners and gay-bashers obviously are not presuming the evidence that God is a real thing in the world. They're hurting people.
Leave people alone, except, to love them and forgive them. Love and forgive. Now, I don't mean like them, be affectionate toward them. Follow what C S Lewis says. He points out that the love we're supposed to practice when we "love our neighbor" means no more than wish them well. Additionally, some of the original language says we're to "be of benefit" to them. You don't have to like what they do or what they say and you can certainly be the instrument to bring punishment to those deserving it. Should a Christian judge hand down a death sentence? Yes. All the time wishing that was some way that the person might end up OK; like the thief on the cross that met Jesus "in Paradise." Love and forgive.
Spend all that heavy negatively directed energy confirming God, and trying to grow in faithing. Let me paraphrase C S Lewis. "You may not BE, but you can ACT like you are." You may not have a one hundred percent belief in God. But, if you sat down and thought about it, I bet you could figure out how you would act if you did have that complete belief. Then you can "pretend" you do while you take some action. That's the formula for faithing. When I am not in total control of a situation, all I can do is point myself toward the goal, knowing that it's Right, and get on with what I can do today, with the hope that the unknown will be overcome.
You may not be, but you can act like you are.
Try faithing.
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